~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Our current national poet laureate is 46-year-old Tracy K. Smith. Educated at Stanford, Harvard and Columbia and a professor at Princeton, she has dedicated her laureate mission to visits to small towns across the country that have had little exposure to famous, live poets. She believes that poetry can be a lifesaver to all of us whose stories she knows are important not just to us, but to each other, friends and strangers alike.
As Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, her mission is to further the appreciation of poetry across the land. She will make $35,000 doing this. There is also a $5,000 travel bonus, all of this paid for each year by a gift from the Archer M Huntington trust.
Billy Collins, a two-term poet laureate – 2001 and 2002 – circulated his easy-to-read-and-understand poetry at readings around the country and instituted Poetry 180, 180 understandable poems to be read daily to high school students. His poems make people laugh, improve one’s imagination, take us to new places – sometimes into the walls of a house where the mice live (in his poem called “The Country”); sometimes to an island in the South Pacific where there are no phones (in the poem “Forgetfulness”). He does not believe that poets should lead as much as reflect, especially if they can do it in simple words.
In 2004 and 2005, Ted Kooser was our poet laureate. He was born in Ames and received his BA from Iowa State; he’s now an English professor at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He is called the “first Great Plains Poet Laureate.” His way of spreading the good news of poetry was to inveigle newspapers to include his column on poetry once a week or so. The column was a brief six or eight inches long and included a poem by a current American, introduced by him. His parents were journalists, so he had grown up reading the morning newspaper, and he knew that poetry used to be a newspaper staple – turn of the last century and into the ‘30s perhaps, depending on the publication – and he thought it might be a good idea to reintroduce the habit. I remember those years of Kooser-chosen poems in papers across the country and looked forward to his column. I have not seen its like since, although once I saw a poem within a letter to the editor.
Over the years since 1985, when the title of Poet Laureate was first created, different PLOTUSes (Poet Laureate of the United States) have initiated various ways of exposing us to poetry: Joseph Brodsky, 1991, made sure there were poetry books in airports, supermarkets and hotel rooms. Maxine Kumin, 1981, held poetry workshops for women at the Library of Congress in DC. Gwendolyn Brooks, 1985, encouraged grade schoolers to write poems.
Tracy K. Smith, 2018 PLOTUS, won the 2012 Pulitzer for poetry for her collection, “Life on Mars.” Her dad worked on the Hubbell space telescope, which inspired the poems in that prize-winning book. In her travels to the burgs and villages of middle America, she reads a few poems, then listens to what people have to say to her about their lives. Much of her poetry, she says, comes from just listening.
Because April is poetry month, join the reason for its being and read a poem, maybe by one of the above. Or recite one you remember from nursery rhymes. Or write one yourself. Tracy K. Smith wrote a one-word poem to a fan: “Grace.” A couple of years ago I wrote a four-word poem: “Duck, duck/serious duck.”
Poetry can be lifesaving when you are grumpy or bereft. And there are theories that reading poetry, in direct opposition to watching the news, makes for a longer life. Try it.
Here’s the final stanza of one that might make you smile and encourage you to read more:
“. . . I saw that worrying had come to nothing
“and gave it up. And took my old body
“and went out into the morning,
“and sang.”
from a poem called “I Worried” by Mary Oliver
